Coming Home

August 25th — actually just trying to cope with the hassle and bussle of leaving home, moving to another site. Anyway, coming home at about 7 in the morning, I cannot walk into the street where I still live, police stropping me and saying I have to enter from the other side — he briefly looks pass the van that is blocking the entrance. I turn around and a scary idea comes to my mind: of course, the house opposite of VAM 9. I walk and feel anger coming up: my dearest neighbors being threatened, part of what was at some stage my property being “under fire”. I arrive at the other end, facing a little army. The one of the police force asking me — I say I am living there. He allows me to pass, to enter the zone where the weapons are still only firing symbolically, though provoking violence. And the anger is changing in some way: I feel that I am to just in another war zone — I am feeling at the very same time how helpless I am: war against against young people. Since I am living in VAM they were flying a flag: dégagé. The peaceful occupation of a previously empty house. I look across the street, see the face of the young woman standing at the gate, peaceful … – the rest is interpretation: disillusioned, frustrated, disappointed … — will she, will the lads from across the street remain as peaceful as they had been all the time? I talked occasionally to some of them, had been invited to their parties: nice folks: “We just want to work and study, and for that we need a place to live … — that is all.” — Nothing about fractious attitudes, so often seen in the seemingly peaceful surrounding of an Italian middle-class area, peaceful with the various nunneries around, people, being good and doing good and of course all being honest …

This is the future Europe, and Italy is part of it, offers to its youth. It is that future about which I talked during the conference against war in Berlin last year – as follow-up a book had been published. It is that future of which unemployment, homelessness and migration are just different sides. It shows that we all are still and increasingly Greeks. And it is a future that is in this way dangerously creating a tinderbox.

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Una risposta a "Coming Home"

So,there is life in the desert Rome at Ferragosto!!

A Black Tuesday for the students of Degage Movement; for them another episode in their ever-lasting struggle for a place of their own.
A Glorious Tuesday for many people living in the adjunct buildings; for them, the conclusive episode of an obsession.
An Outrageous Tuesday for the few ones in the neighbourhood who cannot proceed as if nothing has happened; for them, another episode proving the reluctance of the political force to take up the responsability of what we call “emergenza casa”.
As for myself ,I am glad I am elsewhere -celebrating the rituals of Ferragosto far from the problems of the Capital city, like most of the Romans – as I still shudder at the memory of the loud sounds when they broke into Via Musa, 10. I question ( do not approve if I may say) THEIR way of facing the problem of housing. At the same time I also shudder at the thought of passing by Via Antonio Musa ,10 next week, back from the “rituals” proceeding as if nothing has happened.
Thank you Peter , for keeping alive such an important issue for the ones who have a special tendency to a more comfortable oblivion.